


Demons and Fallen Angels

by hauntedbytears



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Castiel Can Hear Longing, Coda, Feelings, M/M, Season 9, season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 22:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6395824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedbytears/pseuds/hauntedbytears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens at night sometimes, like the flickering of a broken screen. On and off, on and off, that gentle longing, almost not there yet just vaguely identifiable as Dean’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demons and Fallen Angels

“Well, guess what? He’s dead too.”

Metatron stands above him with a twisted expression, his mouth downturned in a grotesque mockery of sadness and his eyes wide and sympathetic but lit with a horrible joy. It was amazing how much he stood out in his own office, amongst the polished wood and laminated book covers.

And Castiel knows first hand that Metatron lies, knows that there’s even more reason than usual for him to spin a tale, buy some time and cause some confusion. 

He wouldn’t trust Metatron with anything, and in any other circumstance, he would ignore the man’s words and instead focus his attentions on some way to escape. In any other circumstance, he would block out the scribe’s whining voice in favour of looking for some other small weakness in the trap. 

In any other circumstance, where that sheer absence of longing wasn’t clawing at his very being.

He’s gotten used to it, that gentle yet insistent tug. Even at times when his stolen grace faltered more than usual and left only its sour and coppery taste in his throat, he could feel it, more directionless and vague, but always there. It was how he was able to locate Dean after purgatory, how he was able to find him at all those places when no address had been given.

It was gone now, the empty hole it left more painful than the burn and sizzle of failing grace. Some small part of him wants to curl up with the agony and block out the world, and another part screamed out for blood, for red hot revenge.

Metatron hadn’t lied this time, about anything, really. Castiel had given it all up for Dean Winchester, and had failed yet again at protecting the one man he’d been willing to sacrifice everything for, the one man he-

Well, Dean’s gone now, and it may or may not be all Castiel’s fault.

He pushes down the feeling, metaphorically grits his teeth against the devastation that threatens to wrench it’s way past his jaw. After all, he’s got a plan B to execute. For his brothers and sisters, the raw grief could wait.

The angels come pouring through the door, and it takes everything Castiel has to not shove a blade into Metatron’s heart.

\--------

Castiel would be lying if he said he’d never cried over Dean’s death, never huddled away and sobbed until his throat was sore and his eyes were misty. When Sam had first called him about Dean's apparent possession, he hadn't even dared to hope that Dean was still in there somewhere. He's learnt how much worse it was when you let yourself believe there was hope.

But then he feels that longing again.

It happens at night sometimes, like the flickering of a broken screen. On and off, on and off, that gentle tugging feeling, almost not there yet just vaguely identifiable as Dean’s.

He’d passed it off as a phantom feeling at first, something felt the way a human would feel a phantom limb. It’s funny how that happened when you got used to a feeling, how your mind could insist upon keeping the memory and weaving something from it. It was the same when he’d first fallen, his human body cradling what remained of that one small comfort, trying to convince him that there were still the weight of wings on his back and the warm longing to keep him rooted.

He remembers how the longing had begun even before he’d fully rebelled, and how it had only grown stronger from there. 

Then, after he’d first dragged Dean out of the green room, around the time Dean first truly smiled at him with eyes sparkling, there grew to be another feeling, a small waning and waxing pull at his heart. Although, looking back, that may have been something else entirely.

"Do you still think there's still some part of him that's Dean?" He asks Sam one day, in regards to this slight and discontinuous pull. He wasn’t sure what had made him ask it, only that he’d felt strangely vulnerable, and strangely hopeful. Strangely human, perhaps, with the sunlight streaming through the window, an all too familiar cough in his throat, and an even more familiar twisting pain in his heart.

Sam disregards the notion with a heavy tone, and Castiel doesn’t say more about it.

A little later, he gets called away by Hannah to hunt a pair of rogue angels. Metatron’s words echo in his head, and it only steels his resolution to help heaven.

\--------

Daniel reminds Castiel a lot of himself, and he wants to throw up after he kills him. The rogues had the right idea, he can’t help himself from thinking, to simply co-exist, to just want to be left alone on a small river bank amongst the trees and the stars.

Hannah glances over at him a lot through the trip, mostly after his talks with the rogues. They were small looks, almost inconspicuous, if an angel could be inconspicuous. He meets some of those glances, and allows her almost familiarly blue eyes to whisper ‘look how far you’ve fallen’ before he turns away abruptly.

He doesn’t -can’t- deny it. Castiel knows he’s changed, can feel it in his hunger and tiredness and pain. Yet he’d been cast from heaven’s blindly loyal ranks before this, even before the whole thing with the leviathans.  _ The blood of a fallen angel _ , he can recall vaguely,  _ always happy to bleed for the Winchesters _ .

They say that it is a terrible sin to hold another above heaven, and that’s exactly what he’d done, drunk on sweet longing and sharp green eyes. Except it was far from simple intoxication, because despite what Hester had said, he’d never been corrupted by Dean.

He’d been found.

And he’d fallen in every way, leapt of his own accord a few times, too. To be truly honest, he didn’t mind being human, even found it, in some little way, freeing. If he hadn’t been homeless, and if he hadn’t been hunted by angels, and if he hadn’t been away from his two friends, it would have been, if not perfect, a good way to live a life. However, that was the problem, the multitudes of ‘ _ if _ ’s, all the uncertainties that came with being human.

He might still prefer it to what he is now, a dying thing dangling between angelicness and humanity, dangling in between Earth and Heaven, both and neither.

As he sits quietly in the car, with the scenery flashing green and yellow around him and his own weariness the only tug at his being, he wonders about going rogue. It would be nice, he decides, to leave the puppet strings behind and well and truly hang himself on the ropes of free will. Since Sam’s recent notification on the situation a few days into the trip, he wonders a lot if this is what Dean feels like right now, if he too was lingering between  being demon and being human, the empty longing a sign of that indecision.

Because he’s sure by now that the longing was more than a figment of his imagination. It just further encourages his hope that Dean could be saved.

_ A flashback, looking into The Righteous Man’s eyes, all that grace and power inside him, all that forced obedience, too. ‘You don’t think you deserve to be saved.’ He had stated. _

But now Castiel knows Dean, knows his love and his joy, knows his pain and his anger. He’s seen how Dean provides for his family and how he falls asleep on the bunker’s tables after a day of hunting. He understands Dean Winchester now, and knows with a burning certainty that yes, of course he deserved to be saved, and Castiel would give almost anything to save him.

He falls asleep thinking about the brightness of Dean’s soul, and how much he hopes it would remain stubbornly shining after all this is over.

**Author's Note:**

> Written after rewatching seasons 9 and 10, and after getting kinda (read, pretty damn) emotional over it all. Surprise, surprise (!) this was also written at 2 am, which is a great excuse for all the mistakes.  
> Leave a comment if you feel like it, and thanks for even getting to these notes.


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